Search Results for 'Clanricarde'

Home to The Irish Workhouse Centre, and the exquisitely preserved 15th century Portumna Castle, the market town of Portumna in the south-east of Galway County, features some of the most thought provoking and important sites in the country.

Blunt was an aristocratic English writer, a person of remarkable ability who, as “the best looking man in England was credited with having refreshed the blood of several ancient families”. He was always against colonialism and sympathetic to small nations, so it was no surprise that he became an ardent supporter of Home Rule for Ireland. In 1887, he was in Ireland to study the grievances of the people when he heard that evictions had recommenced on the 56,000-acre estate of Lord Clanricarde in Woodford.

John Henry Foley was one of the greatest artists this country produced in the 19th century. He was a world famous sculptor who was commissioned to produce many public works in different parts of the world including Galway. The statue he produced here was of Lord Dunkellin, a 2.5 metre high bronze on a polished Peterhead red granite base which stood on two steps of Aberdeen granite about 20 yards inside the main gate into the Square. ‘In none of the great works which have given him world-wide celebrity has he shown more genius and skill than in the present instance where, with only the slender assistance of a photograph, has he been able to produce the faithful likeness.’

Week IV. Further humiliation was heaped upon Colonel Richard Martin, who sought redress for the ‘dishonour to his bed, the alienation of his wife’s affection, the destruction of his domestic comfort, the suspicion cast upon the legitimacy of the wife’s offspring, and the mental anguish which the husband suffers’ (such was the legal language of the day), during his divorce trial against John Petrie, to be awarded only £10,000., exactly half of the £20,000. which he felt justified in demanding.